In this section you will find several examples of lessons or activities that show how I plan educational experiences for my students.
The Chrysalids
In this first example, a forum assignment I gave to my English 10-1 class in 2015, I challenge the students to re-examine the text and their own response to it to determine what the novel reveals about identity, equity, religion, gender, conformity, justice and a host of other issues. The muse for this forum activity is the dystopian novel The Chrysalids, a work that has stood the test of time and continues to challenge its readers. In the assignment I ask students to pair up, interrogate the text, and engage in a well-considered dialogue using a quote or two as a starting point. Please note, this assignment was totally of my own devising. I found the textual excerpts and came up with the forum questions. I've included the lesson plan, the forum prompts and the pairing template with suggestions for how to conduct the forum discussions.
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Density and Prepositions
The second set of examples includes a lesson plan developed with Jeanne Ratzlaff as an example for our teacher colleagues in Tanzania for our ISTEP 13 project. In this lesson we tried to model how a lesson might be built for students who are learning scientific and mathematical concepts in a language that is not their first language. The lesson plan incorporates scaffolding and suggestions that allow the students to enter in to the lesson at their level. I've also included a lesson plan that I wrote together with Thadeus, the English teacher at Mwanza. Prior to our visit, Thaddeus was an instructor who would "stand and deliver", lecturing and then going up and down the rows asking students to repeat what he had said. This lesson shows Thaddeus's first forays into using poster work, small group discussion, demonstration and reflection on learning.
Both lesson also championed a template for planning that was soon adopted by the instructional staff in Mwanza. Prior to this the instructors' lesson plans did not consider much more than the content they had hoped to share or the skill that they wanted to work on. The lesson template we shared (adapted from the ISW lesson plan template) asked instructors to consider the pre-learning of their students, challenge the instructors to make connections and engage these students, make adjustments in the lesson based upon minute by minute assessment, and check for understanding as the lesson came to a close. The staff at Mwanza were quite appreciative of the example and the template. I have included the lesson plan and the template.
Both lesson also championed a template for planning that was soon adopted by the instructional staff in Mwanza. Prior to this the instructors' lesson plans did not consider much more than the content they had hoped to share or the skill that they wanted to work on. The lesson template we shared (adapted from the ISW lesson plan template) asked instructors to consider the pre-learning of their students, challenge the instructors to make connections and engage these students, make adjustments in the lesson based upon minute by minute assessment, and check for understanding as the lesson came to a close. The staff at Mwanza were quite appreciative of the example and the template. I have included the lesson plan and the template.
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